Kathmandu. Presidential elections are being held in Nepal today. According to the local time, voting started at 10 am and will continue till 3 pm. After this, the results of the election are expected to come by around 7 pm. Ramchandra Paudel from Nepali Congress and Subhash Chandra Newang from Oli’s party CPN-e-ML are candidates for the post of President. The Election Commission informed that all the preparations for the polling have been completed in the Lhotse Hall of the Parliament House of Nepal.
Nepal’s Chief Election Commissioner Mahesh Sharma Poudel said that the Election Commission has set up two polling booths for voting. Members of Parliament will vote at one of these booths. On the other hand, the members of the Legislative Assemblies across the country will vote in the second booth. All the MLAs have reached Kathmandu for voting.
However, the election of Nepali Congress candidate Ramchandra Paudel as the President is almost certain. He has the support of 8 parties including Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s party. On the other hand, CPN-ML candidate Subhash Chandra Nebang is expected to get the support of independent members apart from his own party. On the other hand, Rashtriya Prajatantra Party has decided not to support any candidate on Wednesday.
There are 884 members in the Electoral College of Nepal. Of these, 274 members belong to the House of Representatives, while 59 members belong to the National Assembly. Apart from these, 550 members from the Legislative Assemblies across the country are also a part of the Electoral College. The weightage of the vote of an MP in an election is 79 while that of an MLA is 48.
This means a total of 52,786 votes are to be cast for the presidential election in which the candidate who gets the majority will become the new President of Nepal.
Earlier, KP Oli’s party Nepal Unified Marxist Leninist (PNCP) Amale, which was in alliance with Prime Minister Dahal’s party in the Government of Nepal, left the alliance on 15 Falgun (27 February). In fact, Dahal had decided to support the Nepali Congress candidate instead of the presidential candidate of CPN-UML.
After this Oli’s party flared up and he withdrew his support from the government. At the same time, 4 ministers of the Rashtriya Prajatantra Party including Nepal’s Deputy Prime Minister Rajendra Singh Lingden have also resigned due to this.
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